ART.
THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. [SECOND NOTICE.] IN our first notice of this Gallery we did not mention any of the works of the very early water-colour painters, nor those of Turner, but confined ourselves to some general remarks upon the progress of the art, and noticed a few of the works of Cox, De Wint, Cotman, &c., as exemplifying this progress. We have now to speak of the various artists who flourished, roughly speak- ing, between 1750 and 1800; and also of the Turner drawings, of which there are a good number, some of the greatest excellence.
Thomas Hearne, " Italian " Smith, Michael Angelo Rooker, Henry Eldridge, and several others may well be classed together for all purposes of criticism, for there is little in any of their pictures to call for special mention, unless it be such character- istics as they all alike possess. And it is to a few of these charac- teristics that we would draw our readers' attention. Perhaps the most noticeable of them is the lack of atmosphere in all their work. The sky does not seem to have been regarded by them as a means of giving light at all, but rather for the purpose of aiding in the composition of the picture, and especially valuable for its power of increasing a certain sombre harmony which is very striking in the drawings of this period. In nine out of ten of these drawings the sky is represented as a heavy mass of cumulus clouds arranged in a pyramidical form, and often threatening to overwhelm the landscape beneath. Even when the sky is one from which a little light falls on the landscape beneath, the clouds are still of this heavy texture, like masses of cotton-wool dipped in dirty water and piled along the firmament The second great mark of these very early drawings is the complete monopoly which tradition seems to have held in the minds of the artists. In one of these works after another can we trace the utter subordi- nation of natural fact to conventional representation, and in no portion of the landscape is this so evident, as a rule, as in the treatment of the trees. Each artist seems to have quite made up his mind that trees were objects with which he might deal as he liked, without much attention to special cases, and so we have time after time a sort of type of tree-form, varying, it is true'
slightly in each artist, but always dependent upon a certain touch and grouping of round masses of foliage which bears but little analogy to the free luxuriance of the natural object. It. was not that the artists of this day could not draw trees, but that they would not look at them and give the trouble to their repre- sentation,—in fact, put them in anyhow, either as a background. to buildings, or as large masses to help their composition. Cox's trees were a decided advance upon this, for though he treated his foliage roughly enough, and generally twisted his branches about in the wildest confusion, yet he did actually paint individual specimens, and his oaks and ashes were roughly like trees of that, species.
It must not be forgotten, however, in judging the drawings of this period, that some allowance is to be made for the wretched state of the colours themselves at this time, for in 1750 there was. not a bright green, blue, or yellow in existence ; and even of the. colours that were manufactured many, no doubt, have faded,. some totally disappeared. And this was the case up to the time, of De Wint, many of whose skies have quite vanished.
The dawn of a brighter day for water-colours may be first. seen, perhaps, in the works of Hills, who though par excellence an animal painter, yet was also a landscape artist of no mean skill. There are several of his works here, the best of which is probably No. 328, "A Farmyard." Here, despite some crude greens and yellows, we can distinctly trace the attempt to paint objects in their natural colours, not, as had formerly been the case, neglect- ing the true colour for the sake of a desired harmony of tone.. Hills was especially celebrated for his drawing of deer, and we. remember to have seen a group of these animals by him with & landscape background by David Cox.
Of the Girtin pictures it is difficult to speak at any length without repeating what we have said of the earlier painters. In his work, too, there is that extraordinary ignorance of the light-giving powers of the sky, and hardly less extraordinary dimness to the colours of nature. In his work there is, however, considerable feeling, and nearly always strength and power of composition- and drawing ; if with all these good qualities his pictures fail to appeal to our sympathies, it is mainly due to the inherently false and vicious method in use at the time he lived, and his early death when little more than a boy precluded the possibility of his emancipation from the doctrines in force at that time. Nos. 311 and 314 here are especially worthy of attention, and also- No. 320, "St. Paul's."
Of the Turner drawings it is difficult to speak adequately in a short notice like the present, and also because they are not yet by any means understood by the general public. In the course of a short half-hour passed at the Grosvenor Gallery yesterday in front of this artist's works, we heard no less than three batches of people, clothed and apparently in other respects in their right mind, declare, with the solemnness of conviction, that they were "false," "ugly," and "wrong." The last remark was made by & mother to her daughter, and implied, as far as we could under- stand, her feeling towards a half-naked baby which lies in the foreground of the " Oberwesel." It is a difficult matter to write upon an artist of whose finest pictures such remarks are currently made. The same class of mind can hardly admire Girtin and Turner, or at all events, put the two upon an equality ; and yet an hour's sojourn at the Grosvenor, with ears and eyes open, will lead you to the astonishing conclusion that the majority of the visitors to the Gallery can admire everything except Turner, and him they either despise, ridicule, or condemn, and very frequently all three. Leaving, however, these people, and those of like opinions, out of the question, we will proceed to mention the best of the drawings, assuming that the best of the Turners means the same thing as the best of the landscapes, either here or in any other exhibition.
There is one quite perfect example of his best period, No. 258, " Oberwesel, on the Rhine," a river landscape, with figures in the foreground, a small white tower on the left-hand side of the picture, and a blue sky with the sun in full view, flooding the pic- ture with light. In the whole range of Turner's works which we have seen there is no single piece of manipulation which ap- proaches to that of the wooded bills and river in this pic- ture. It is literally impossible to do justice in words to the delicacy and beauty of this portion of the work. It passes alto- gether beyond the range of our criticism. Hardly less wonderful as a piece of painting is the delicacy of the light and shade upon the white tower in the foreground, although here the work is simply a magnificent rendering of an ordinary piece of light and shade, whilst in the mist and reflections of the river there is all the sublimity of transcendent genius.
Those, too, who are accustomed to sneer at Turner's figures and drapery may learn a lesson from this picture, if they will, which will make them recant.
Next to this in merit comes the "Heidelberg,"—not the well-known picture crowded with figures and incident, but another treatment of the subject, with the river and castle well in the middle of the picture, and on the left a walk, along which students, nurses, and children are loitering. This is more gorgeous in colour than the " Oberwesel," and belongs probably to the same period as his "Ulysses and Polyphemus." The " Oberwesel " is a silver picture, this is gold, in tone. A sort of red gold blazes over everything,—the river, castle, figures, and sky, except where in the far background the sun is setting in a mass of blue.
Of the same period, but inferior in subject and slighter in execution, especially in the foreground, is "The Carew Castle," No. 263, a drawing of singular beauty, especially in the middle- distance. This is another sunset effect, the Castle being treated with that beautiful touch of " faerie " which Turner loved to throw over his buildings. Underneath this is a very delicate, early drawing of " Cashiobury," with deer in the foreground, and the Hall standing far back on the rising ground, surrounded by trees. This is, we should say, one of the last of the pictures in yellow tones which Turner painted before his transition into greys and blues. And if any of our readers will take the trouble to compare this work with No. 262, which hangs some way above it, they will see clearly how the transition was accomplished. For this last picture, "Dartmouth Cove," one of the "England and Wales "series, is built upon a foundation of yellowish-brown, which shows out very plainly in the middle-distance, whilst in the foreground and background it possesses all that peculiarly deli- cate manipulation of blue and grey which is so characteristic of this series. And in No. 255, " Llanthony Abbey," a draw- ing a little subsequent to the last-named, the yellow tone has entirely disappeared, and there is nothing but blue, green, and grey. Of the remaining Turners, we have left ourselves no space to speak in detail, but must group them as best we can. Nos. 256, 265, and 268 are all early drawings of nearly the same period, of which No. 265, "Old Bridge" is, perhaps, the most entirely beautiful. No. 264, "Heron-Shooting," of a little later period than " Llanthony Abbey," is as good a specimen of that time as could be found, and probably inferior to none here, save the first three we have quoted. Of the eighteen others we can only say that " Reichenbach " (260) and the "Lake of Lucerne at Sunset" are the best, the latter being, perhaps, the most poetical of all the Turners here. We cannot refrain from quoting, in conclusion, the one remark we heard made with honest enthusiasm in this Gallery, and it was made by a working- man, a propos of the " Oberwesel,"—" I'd live on a meal a day all my life to possess that picture."
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